'1984' Book Sales Jump 7000 Percent After NSA Surveillance News

Sales of George Orwell’s book "1984" rose dramatically this week on Amazon, with three editions of "1984" sitting in the Top 10, and many are attributing the resurgence to revelations of a government surveillance program monitoring Americans.

Amazon’s Movers & Shakers countdown pointed to three different editions of Orwell’s book that have been climbing in popularity since the news of the NSA’s clandestine spying program PRISM broke.

Although the book’s sudden increased popularity may be due to concerns that the government is watching a little too closely, comments on many of the articles attributed the cause to "1984" marking its 60th anniversary last week and also to summer reading lists for kids.

But social media conversations also centered around the ideas espoused in "1984" and other futuristic books like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

“I’ve always seen Orwell as more of a humanist and his fiction more as warnings than entertainment. If we’re heading toward totalitarianism in all its insidious subtlety, best to go with the greatest warning against totalitarianism ever written,” wrote Tallgent on EW.com. “But yeah, I think Aldous Huxley’s novel 'Brave New World' is even better in some respects because this is also reflective of our times — perhaps even more so — a society drunk on pop culture soma and virtual entertainment failing to recognize the dehumanization happening around them — until it's too late.”

Amazon sales of George Orwell’s "1984" rose dramatically this week, with three editions of the book sitting in the Top 10, and many are attributing the resurgence to revelations of a government surveillance program monitoring Americans.